Most artists promote a song in one of two ways. They run a few ads on the music video and stop, or they pay for creator videos and stop. Each one works on its own. Together, in the right order, they do a lot more. This is the plan we use for our own campaigns, with real prices, so you can run it with us or on your own.
The plan in one paragraph
Start with the music video so the song has a home that people can find and watch. Then get creators posting with your sound on TikTok and Instagram, so the song shows up in people’s feeds in a way that feels natural. Once the creator videos are up, pick the ones that are doing best and put ad budget behind them. The creators get the song in front of their followers. The ads take those same videos and put them in front of everyone else.
Three steps. Here is how each one works.
Step 1: The music video campaign
If you have an official video on YouTube, this is where to begin. It is the version of the song you control, it has your name on it, and it is the link you will send everywhere else.
What you do
- Upload the official video to your own YouTube channel if it is not there yet. Clean title: your name, the song, “(Official Music Video)”.
- Decide who should see it. Genre, age, countries. If you are not sure, start with the audience that already listens to artists like you.
- Run it as a skippable in-stream ad. People choose to watch, so the views are real viewers, not a number.
What it costs with us
- Music video promotion starts at $30 for 500 views and goes up to $1,200+ for 20,000 views.
- That works out to $0.03 to $0.06 per view depending on the budget.
- Your dashboard shows views, spend, and the comments as they come in, so you can see what is happening day by day.
What to expect
A $30 campaign finishes in a day or two. Larger budgets run over a week or more. You will see the view count move on YouTube itself, not just in a report, usually with a lag of a day while YouTube confirms the views.
Step 2: The creator campaign on TikTok and Instagram
Now the song needs to be heard where people actually discover music, which is in their feeds. A creator campaign gets real creators posting videos with your sound. The videos stay on their pages, and every one of them links back to your sound, so anyone who likes the video can tap the sound and find you.
How it works
- You tell us the genre and the type of creator you want: who should be in the videos, what they should look like, how the song should be used.
- We put the song on our creator board. Creators claim a spot, make a video with the sound, and post it on their own account.
- Each creator is paid per video. The videos are theirs, the sound is yours, and the views and sound page are the record of the campaign.
What it costs with us
- A TikTok creator campaign starts at $75. Creators are paid $7 to $20 per video, so a campaign is a set of videos, not one big post.
- Instagram Reels campaigns start at $100.
- Featured creators are the add-on: pick a specific creator from the dashboard and book her directly for your song.
What to expect
Creator videos post over a week or two as spots get claimed and filmed. A five-video TikTok campaign usually lands a few thousand views across the videos. Ten videos does more than double that, because the sound page starts to fill up and the videos feed each other. Some videos will do great and some will be quiet. That is normal, and it is exactly why step 3 exists.
Step 3: The ad push on the creator videos
This is the step most people skip, and it is where the money does the most work.
The creators can take you a certain distance. Their followers see the videos, some of those people tap the sound, and the song gets a real start. But each creator’s reach is her own audience. To get the song past that, you take the creator videos that are already working and put ad budget behind them.
Why it works better than running your own ad
- The video already exists and already proved itself. You are not guessing which creative will land.
- The ad runs on the creator’s own post, so the views and the likes land on her video and on your sound page. Nothing is reposted and nothing looks like an ad from a label.
- People respond to a real person in their feed. A creator dancing to the song in her kitchen gets watched longer than a cover-art slideshow.
How to do it
- Wait until the creator videos are up. Give them two or three days to find their footing.
- Look at the numbers. Pick the one or two videos with the best watch time and the most saves or shares, not just the most views.
- Put a small budget on those videos and run them to the same audience you used for the music video.
- After a few days, move the budget to whichever video is getting the cheapest views.
Where the dashboard makes this easy
On your campaign dashboard, every creator video has a Promote button under it. You pick the video, choose the budget, and we handle the rest: the creator’s permission to run her post as an ad, the targeting, the run, and the results back on the same dashboard next to the organic numbers. You never have to open an ads manager.
Putting it together: a sample plan
Here is a straightforward version for a new release.
Week 1. Music video campaign running. Creator campaign posted to the board, first spots claimed.
Week 2. Creator videos going up. Music video campaign wraps. You watch which creator videos are moving.
Week 3. Ad push on the best one or two creator videos. The sound page keeps growing while the ads run.
A starting budget could look like this: $30 on the music video, $75 on TikTok creators, and a modest boost on the best creator video after it posts. From there you scale whichever step is giving you the best cost per view, and you add Instagram or featured creators when you want more.
What this plan does not do
We buy real views and real posts, not a hit. Nobody can promise a song will take off, and anyone who does is selling you something else. What this plan gives you is a song with a real video count, a sound page with real creator videos on it, and ads that put those videos in front of people who have never heard of you. That is the foundation. What happens after that comes down to the song.
Ready to start
You can set up a campaign in a few minutes at castellamedia.com/create-campaign, or try the music video step first with a free trial. Every campaign comes with the dashboard, so you can see all three steps in one place.